If you would like the benefits of owning real property but without the time consumption of most real estate ownership, I would suggest triple net leased properties.

Our society is already too much in favor of consumption and too little in favor of savings.

It just has to be enough time consumption that you can actually build a process/SOP around it. 

But I REALLY want to cut down on water consumption since I pay the bill.

Sub-metering can be a cheap way of allocating costs to each unit, but you usually have to leave the master meter (the city's meter) in your name, making you responsible for the water consumption.

Hmmm....Apparently, some people see a tenant as only a paying unit of consumption, and others see a tenant as a human being who wants to pay to live in your house or apartment.

Microeconomic considerations are certainly valid in RE, understand the concept of the marginal propensity of consumption and you can apply that to rent levels and valuations.

Just a short list of things we do which differentiate us in our market:Utilities Budget - provides tenants with single payee {us} for rent and utilities, but keeps them accountable for their utilities consumption;Energy efficient & healthy homes - especially amongst our student rentals, we are developing a reputation for units in which the utilities are far less than the competition."

Seems he went for a midnight swim three days before and suffered a heart attack on the water, or so the story for public consumption goes.

By sharing the cost of water and trash with our tenants, they are given a metric to understand their consumption and a motivation to take actions to reduce their costs.